Cultivating creativity in the countryside – from rural Ontario to PyeongChang, Korea

During the week of October 19th I was honored to give a seminar at the Academy of Korean Studies on the rural creative economies in Prince Edward County and Muskoka. The seminar was based on research that I have conducted in both places as well as recent work on the creative economy in Canada more generally. Three other international experts, Arjo Klamer of Erasmus University, David Throsby of Macquarie University, and Frances Rowe of Newcastle University also gave seminars based on their academic work and its local applications. As did our wonderful host and organizer of the conference, Taeck-Soo Chun. Across the case studies from the five countries there was general agreement that rural areas are at a disadvantage in the creative economy due to a lack of density and clustering. Another major issue that was highly apparent was that rural areas have a very hard time attracting and retaining young workers. With these challenges in mind one of the messages that came across was that rural areas must be more intentional and strategic in developing their creative economies than their urban counterparts. A number of successful examples were cited by the researchers.

After two days at the AKS we were hosted by officials in PyeongChang, the site of the 2018 Winter Olympics. While the preparations for the games are well underway, attention is now being paid to the legacy aspects of the games. The area is mainly rural but has great potential going forward. Key to development is building upon the natural local assets by developing a system of continual refinement. Below are some pictures of the tour.

The center of PyeongChang

An example of some of the best local cuisine. I cannot describe how good this was!

The proceedings of the conference are to be published a book in 2016. You can download the presentation slides here. As always, if you want any further information or have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.